Cellphone expert's testimony attacked at DeGennaro trial

Defense attorneys at the Danny DeGennaro murder trial in Doylestown on Thursday tried to plant doubt in jurors’ minds by attacking the prosecution’s cellphone forensics expert.

Falls Township police Detective Joseph Coffman took the stand for the prosecution Wednesday and gave a multimedia presentation depicting the locations of each suspect’s cellphone at the time the popular Levittown musician was gunned down in his Crabtree Drive home.

Coffman, a former U.S. Marine who was trained by the FBI and other agencies in cellphone forensics, said cellphone tower records made it possible to track the suspects as they allegedly moved from Trenton to Levittown and back to Trenton on the night of the homicide.

Coffman’s testimony was especially damaging to suspect Breon Powell, 21, of Trenton, because Powell claims to have an alibi that would put him at work, in Florence, N.J., when the shooting occurred.

Powell is standing trial along with Kazair Gist, 19, of Trenton. Prosecutors say the two men fired guns at DeGennaro, 56, during a botched robbery around 10 p.m. on Dec. 28, 2011.

Powell allegedly hit DeGennaro in the chest with a shotgun blast. Police say Gist fired a handgun at the musician, but missed.

In court Thursday, Powell’s attorney, Robin Lord, asked Coffman to admit that his presentation was inaccurate. She pointed out 20 phone calls that were on Jermaine Jackson’s phone records, to and from people not charged in the crime, that were not in Coffman’s report.

Jackson, 20, of Trenton, was convicted by a separate Bucks County jury in May and is serving a life sentence.

Lord accused Coffman of not giving jurors “the full picture,” and said he didn’t take into consideration factors like high cellphone traffic during a busy holiday week.

Lord asked Coffman to agree that the jury should disregard his entire presentation because it was based on flawed information.

“You’ve heard the term garbage in, garbage out?” she asked.

Gist’s lawyer, Alan Bowman, also challenged Coffman’s presentation, with characteristically colorful language. He called Coffman’s work “a sophisticated clerical exercise,” and asked him if certain phone record details were part of the “matrix of (his) decisive investigative methodology.”

While Coffman was explaining the instructions that prosecutors gave him when he received the suspects’ phone records for review, Bowman asked him if he was just blindly taking orders.

“Was that like Pork Chop Hill in (the Korean War) where you had to take it because you had no choice?” he asked.

Coffman said he didn’t understand the question, and Bowman moved on to another topic.

After the defense lawyers finished questioning Coffman, prosecutor Matt Weintraub asked the detective to pull out some of the phone records that defense lawyers claimed were inaccurate. Through a series of answers, Coffman showed that some of the calls that appeared to be missing on one suspect’s records when another suspect’s record showed a call, were either dropped because there was no service or went straight to voice mail.

Prosecutors could wrap up their case Monday, then the defense will begin.

Powell and Gist are charged with criminal homicide, robbery, burglary, conspiracy and other crimes. If convicted, Powell could face the death penalty. Gist, who was a juvenile at the time of the killing, could be sentenced to life.